The West Woods
by sugarfrostvii
Summary: Woodie has never experienced the red hotness of a blush upon his cheeks at the sight of another human being before, and he thought he never would after being dragged into this hell. But after meeting a reserved but productive and determined mime named Wes that's likely about to e two begin to grow together, working cooperatively to survive in a land with many dangers.
1. A Wes in the Woods

Dawn broke like any other to the sound of Catcoons meowling as they crawled out of their burrows and the din of bees buzzing around the field. A field in which a small home had been made with lumpy stone pillars lined up to keep out hounds or other creatures, and a wooden door that splintered and hitched awkwardly. Wooden boards covered part of the earth within the stone wall, a floor half finished at the time. Bedrolls stayed rolled out where upon - on two separate sides of a dwindling fire inside a pit - slept two figures.

The first was a lanky thing, with arms like noodles and legs like twigs, and a face shaped like an almond. A long face with a pointed chin above which set a mouth with uncharacteristically plump lips painted black as the hair atop his head. At the center of his face was a pointed and defined nose that seemed sharp if not for the very small rounding at the tip. The rest of his features were painted white except his eyelids -which were brushed with a dull purple - and his cheeks, covered in a prominent red blush that made clear his occupation, which was a mime. And his name was Wes.

The second Figure laying upon the ground was a man of work. Though he had a thinner waist his chest and arms were built from the hard work he did as a lumberjack. He had an orange beard that covered all of his upper lip, but left enough room for the lower one to protrude, and there was the spot where one could see two teeth -bucked and gaped- resting upon it. From his head to his toe the man was covered in red hairs, his arms most so and his chest, seen from the way his shirt opened slightly at the top and the soft red fur stuck out. This man's name was Woodie and it was he who woke first.

Woodie rolled to one side. He rolled to the other side. Then he wheeled onto his stomach and propped himself upon his elbows, his hands rose-up to scrub at his face. He opened his eyes and breathed sharply through his nose. Above the blades of grass woven together to make a pillow rested his trusty ax, Lucy. He reached out to her, wrapping his hand about her and grumbling a dry 'g'morning' and he heard her hum sharply back in greeting.

Lifting himself he dusted his pants of the flaky dried grass bits, a dusty bedroll it was but a bedroll nonetheless, and he moved to stir the fire to keep it alive just long enough to make breakfast.

'How did you sleep, big guy?'

He could hear her grating voice in his ears. To others the sound might be unpleasant but Woodie found it quite comforting and he relaxed as he pulled some morsels from his bag. There had been rabbits in the garden last night and Woodie had sneaked in to kill them before they hurt the crops. He began to cook them over the fire while he chatted quietly with Lucy. Small talk at first, and then of plans later in the day.

It was moments like this that relaxed Woodie. They gave him a little break from the danger around them and made him feel like they were back home. And then he remembered the sleeping figure laying on the ground across from him.

'Woodie, you're staring again.'

"I'm not starin', I'm just lookin' a minute, eh?"

'You're staring.'

There was no point arguing with her, he'd tried before and still the ol' girl would continue to push this idea that he was staring at the mime. He wasn't staring, not for any strange reason anyway. He just worried about the other man. Wes was small, scrawny, and seeming to shrink more so as the days went on. With winter coming Woodie's fear the other would starve was surfacing.

For just a moment Woodie could have sworn the other had stopped breathing. He jumped and stood quickly, taking large strides to close the distance, then he knelt next to the man. His fingers pressed to Wes's pulse and his teeth grit nervously.

The mime stirred.

With a sigh of relief Woodie sat back and exhaled hard, giving a relieved chuckle and smiled into his hands. Wes propped himself up on his elbow and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with a gloved hand before taking a deep breath, huffing it out quickly, and looking to Woodie. His pale gray eyes held inquiry and Woodie tried his best to smile at the other.

"Sorry, just chekin' on yah. You scared me there a moment."

Wes waved his hand about in dismissal a 'fine, it's fine' sort of movement, and he stood up. He dusted himself as the other had earlier and he looked to the fire where some morsels lay next to it.

"You eat those for me, I'm gonna go chop some more wood. Try to find yourself some more food, some that'll last a bit if yah can. The winter is comin'."

Wes nodded. His smile pulling those glistening black lips into a smirking kissable expression. Woodie felt an itch shoot down his spine and his eyes went wide. Right, trees. He had to chop some trees. Woodie saw himself to the splintered gate with the awkward hitches in the woodwork and let himself out.

Past the pale yellowed colour of beehives and the hissing of the neighboring catcoons Woodie trudged. Past a small miniature forest he had planted by hand (in apology to what he'd done to the trees the cones used to be attached to) and into a heavily wooded area that he had yet to wreak havoc on. He began his chopping and Lucy spoke to him.

'You like him, don't you? '

"I was worried about him, that's all."

'For someone who was just worried about him you sure did stare a lot.'

"I'm serious! I don't want him kickin' the bucket on us."

Why was Lucy teasing him so much for looking at Wes? He supposed Lucy was a far simpler creature. Content as long as she was in Woodie's hands, she didn't really need anyone else. The way she saw things it was Lucy and Woodie against the world. But Woodie remembered the night he'd met Wes. He remembered the impression it had left.

Ghostly grey orbs glistened up like a deer in a headlight, reflecting the flame of the torch held in Woodie's hand. If not for the lack of solid form he'd have thought that the lanky man on the ground was a specter come from a grave that had been disturbed. But the solid form and definite colour to the clothes the figure wore was enough to put Woodie's fear at ease.

Woodie had been resurrected that morning in the afternoon, already nearing sunset, and he had worked quickly gathering the utensils to make his torch, then he had set off into the woods in search of a field to make his base. He was still wandering through the woods late into the night and hadn't been expecting to bump into - in quite the literal sense - another living human being!

In all the time Woodie had been here, dying and living and dying again, never once had he come across another human. He had thought himself alone except for Lucy, but she was simply his ax, not someone who could offer much more comfort than a friendly voice now and again. She kept him level headed of course, but the familiarity of a human form was something he'd all but given up hoping to see, unless it were a skeleton whose bones were bare of meat and eyes turned to rot in its head.

The man's lower lip -painted black as the night around them- trembled with fear, and he shook and quivered with nervousness at the sight of the other. Uncertainty evident in his expression. The lumberjack couldn't blame him, the man had probably not seen another human for a long time also.

Tension hung between them, they stared in silence at each other, seemingly unsure of what the other might do. Even Lucy had stopped her talking, which was making Woodie's nerves spike terribly. And the suspense was only broken when the torch on the ground - the one the man had dropped - started to go out. The ghostly man had moved quickly, grabbed it, and began blowing to keep the glow as bright as he could. Then he stood and dusted himself.

"I didn't know there were other people here," Woodie croaked out.

The man shrugged.

"You come across any others?"

He shook his head.

"Wha's yer name?"

The man drew his name in the dark with his torch.

W.

E.

S.

"Alright, Wes. I'm Woodie. Can yah talk?"

There was a pause, the man bit his lip as though in thought, and then he shook his head. Woodie nodded then and huffed in defeat. This would be difficult, wouldn't it?

The men stood there in silence, kicking dirt and looking about awkwardly, each not quite sure how to react to the other. The sound of hounds in the distance made them both lift their heads up. Their eyes locked and it was then - by some unspoken agreement - that they began walking together and away from the noise.

After a time the three of them - Woodie, Lucy, and Wes- happened upon an open field, the golden grass perfectly flat for creating a base. Woodie had picked up a few logs off past survivors -ones he simply assumed were the decayed corpses of himself- and picked stones off of them and he had the means to make a firepit.

He stuck his torch in the ground and placed the stones in a circle. Once the pit was made he filled it with wood and lit it up, illuminating the field for them to see. A stray catcoon in the distance mewled and sprang away from the light off into the tall grass.

Wes retrieved from his bag several morsels and began to cook them over the fire. Once they were done he separated them into two even piles and handed half to Woodie. The woodsman wasn't at all sure why the other so willingly was sharing with him, especially after just meeting and having had no more than a one sided conversation with him, but he took the kindness as a good sign and took his fill of the food.

Wes had an apatite from hell, and it was as though he practically inhaled the food. Woodie was not entirely sure how someone with an appetite like that could be so scrawny. Nevertheless Wes was finished with his own food long before Woodie had made a dent, and the man stood, moving a little bit away from the fire, but sure to stay in its light. He retrieved several items from his bag and set to crafting. An hour in time passed, two hours, three. And when he was done there were two functioning machines that whirred and buzzed.

Woodie was certain that in the morning the man would have wondered off, found his own spot along the strip of flatland, built his own fire, and functioned as a neighbor to him. By the looks of the two machines behind him however, this was not the case, a rather bold statement that Wes was planning to camp with him, and for quite some time.

Woodie would have been furious about this boldness, if not for the lack of human interaction he had suffered for the longest time. So the gesture was not entirely unwelcome and Woodie chose not to say anything that would make Wes feel otherwise, even if it was in him to make a remark that Wes had a lot of guts to make assumptions. He made it a point not to ruin his chance at social interaction, which was something that -until very recently- he hadn't valued in the slightest.

When Wes returned to be close to the campfire he took a seat on the ground and stared into the fire with a ghostly quietness that brought chills onto Woodie's skin. The lumberjack cleared his throat to get his attention.

"How many days yah been here?"

Wes moved his hand, drawing a single tally-mark in the dirt. One day and already he had the utensils to build these contraptions. Either he was a fast worker, or a very very determined one.

"How many times have you been here before?"

Wes shrugged.

"Lost count?"

A nod.

Woodie nodded in understanding, because he too had lost count of how many times he had failed to survive. Spiders, and Tallbirds, and Killer Bees, and Hounds, and Hypothermia, and Insanity; and all had played some part in the past, all were very painful memories. So he made it a point not to inquire about what took Wes out the last time, even if his curiosity was nagging at him.

Wes yawned, and rubbed at his eyes with his gloved hands, layed down on the ground, making it clear he was done with conversation for the time, and tried his best to sleep. Woodie stared at him.

The lumberjack was - for the first time since he had been dragged into this hell - overcome with a feeling of comfort that he was not alone. Someone else was here. Someone else knew how hard it was. Someone else knew his pain, and he was comforted enough to get some rest.

In the morning he woke before Wes had, and he went out to collect Fire wood. When he returned he found the beginnings of stone pillars surrounding part of their camp, and Wes sitting at a small fire cooking what looked to be meat off the thigh of some mammal, what he wasn't quite sure but with the excess of Catcoons he could guess he knew, and he was Impressed with all Wes had done.

'Wow! Slow down, big guy! It's just a tree!'

At the sound of Lucy's grating voice he was pulled from his memory. His teeth were aching, threatening to tear his gums open, and his tailbone felt as though it might split through the flesh of his back. He panted hard and looked around at all the logs he had failed to pick up in his haze. He blinked, shook his head, and ran his hands through his hair with a tug to regain himself.

Gathering a few logs he set to eat the bark so he could keep himself at ease, if only for a while longer. They couldn't afford any mishaps today. Then, once he was finished gnawing on the log he dusted himself, gathered the rest and headed back toward home.

Wes had put a lot of effort into the walls, making a garden behind it which he worked in daily, and a room for Woodie should he want to have a farm. But today there was something new attached to their house. Another room had been built and there in stood a large birdcage and Wes, dusting his hands of his work and wiping his sweat from his brow. With a smile he waved to Woodie, who only saw the birdcage and felt a hot dread settle in his stomach.

Oh.

No.


	2. Caged

Everything from the wooden floor to the very stone that protected them from the hounds Wes had built with his own hands. And when he had finished building their home he planted a garden, and the garden kept him busy with planting, and fertilizing, and watering, and trimming. And that got to where it was tamed, and he hadn't much to do but water the plants in the day and trim a few stray twigs from the berry bushes. And so he would occupy himself with Woodie's farms, watering the vegetables. And one particular day when he was very board after having finished all his work he made a sign for the front, a sign for the garden, and a sign for the farms.

And he could still recall the look of confusion when Woodie came home that night and read aloud 'WesWood Residence' on the signpost.

But after it was all done there wasn't much left to do but sit around and wait for the day to end, unless by lucky chance he could harvest honey from an empty hive or pick up the meat from an unfortunate catcoon. And after that there was nothing left to do.

Wes was left home alone waiting for Woodie to return, and he would sit bored, for the time because he'd eaten, and he'd made boards, and he made chests, but those were things that didn't take long enough to fill his time. So he decided -after eating his breakfast- that he should make himself an Avian Room. And so he set out to gather twigs and seeds, and reeds to make paper, and he broke into his stash of rocks and gold.

He broke two pillars of the west wall in the front room to make a doorway, and then he began setting down new pillars to shape his new hobby room. After he had finished with the size and shape of the room he began to piece together the cage, and when that was done he placed it in the back of the room, in the corner, because there was more to come and there would be rows of them. Then he dusted his hands and smiled at his work, looking up just in time to see Woodie returning home.

He gave him a wave in greeting only to have a look of concern returned to him.

"A birdcage?" Woodie groaned.

And Wes nodded his head. Yes a bird cage! After all he needed something to spend his time on.

"You're kidding right?"

Wes knew how badly the lumberjack detested birds, but he was certain -after he got a few eggs out of the feathered creatures- that he would find himself far more civil about their presence, but Woodie only groaned again and Wes could see the tension forming on his brow.

Wes pouted his lip and moved to open the gate and place his hand on the other man's back. He guided him to sit down by the fire pit, and got him some carrot juice from a container they had made. He handed it to Woodie who nodded and drank eagerly, having been out chopping all day.

Wes looked again at his bird cage and his nose twitched, not unlike a Rabbits, and he stepped to one of their chests to pull out some silk and twigs. He crafted himself a fine bird trap and set it down, baiting it with seeds and stepping back into the front room with Woodie who rubbed his face.

"You're kiddin' right? You're not actually gonna have a buncha birds, are yah?"

But Wes only smiled at the man and nodded his head.

"They'll be chirping at god awful hours of the mornin'! Why would yah want that?"

Wes simply smiled and patted his tummy and pointed to a Tallbird egg they had managed to snag.

"Eggs?"

He nodded his head.

Woodie sighed and rubbed his face but didn't argue any further. Wes was pleased with this, but unsure as to why Woodie was so against his idea. It was a good idea, and he knew the birds would eat meat that had gone bad as long as it were cooked, so they would be able to get rid of some trash that had been left. And of course there was the eggs.

Wes and Woodie couldn't eat rotten meat, so the birds would help dispose of it, and in return they would get fresh eggs that they could cook. It was a fair deal, and Wes would handle it all. After all, Woodie did so much on his own, all of the hard work of chopping and mining. So Wes didn't mind taking on one more thing to help out.

Woody groaned but was finally removing his hands from his face and taking the bag off his back. He removed a satchel of berries from it and handed them to Wes. Wes smiled at this and moved to start a small fire to cook them over.

While Wes cooked Woodie chatted with his ax, Lucy. Wes gave a worried look at the fire. Woodie was a good man. He was a hard worker, a kind heart, and an attentive fellow who went out of his way to communicate with Wes. But the mime did worry for the woodsman's state of mind. Wes could not hear the sharp calls of Lucy, and as such worried when the other would begin holding full conversation with the inanimate object.

He made not a gesture to let this be known to the other. It was likely a coping mechanism, and Wes did not wish to judge the other for seeking comfort, no matter how odd the method might be.

Wes finished with the berries and split them into even piles. He handed the first half to Woodie and kept the second half for himself, and they sat in silence eating for a time before Woodie spoke again.

"Winter's comin', we're gonna need some warmer clothes." He mused, though whether this statement was directly to Wes the mime wasn't sure.

Either way he nodded his head in acknowledgment and made a mental note to find materials to craft winter attire for them.

With the winter so close the days were getting colder, and neither quite fancied freezing to death. It was one of the worst ways to go, next to starving as it were. They were long deaths, painful, and they dragged out too long for anyone to garner any peace from the release of it. No matter how many times Wes went through it himself he never did get used to it, he never was able to take it even knowing soon he would be warm again.

The snapping sound of a bird trap being set off and heavy batting of wings jolted him from his thoughts and he looked at the bird in the cage. It was a redbird and Wes smiled to it as he approached. Calmly he pried the cage open and gripped the bird. Softly he smoothed his thumb down its back, waiting till it had calmed some before moving to the cage to put the bird into it.

He turned then and smiled to Woodie who looked back at him skeptically.

Wes only shrugged and returned to sit next to the fire, Woodie would simply have to co-exist with the bird, that's all there was to it. He'd learn.


End file.
